GAME 201T. Introduction to Game Studies. 3 Credits.

An introduction to the core concepts and methodologies that inform game design, development, and criticism. This course will provide students with a critical overview of each of these content areas and will demonstrate how their specific concerns intersect in the design, production, and reception of contemporary games. It will also teach students hands-on methodologies through which to translate these concepts into creative and critical praxis.

GAME 240. Game Criticism. 3 Credits.

This course is designed to introduce students to the major theoretical approaches and debates that comprise game studies as an academic discipline. It will teach students how to research, evaluate, analyze, and construct persuasive arguments about games and game-related artifacts.

GAME 333. Game Balance, Rules, and Mechanics. 3 Credits.

This course focuses on the complex question of how game designers produce balance through rules, mechanics, aesthetics, and other formal and informal gameplay elements. This course will provide students with an analytical framework to better understand how these elements are not only manifested in specific games, but how they work to simultaneously distinguish genres of games. More significantly, it will provide students with a practical methodology that will help them understand how to apply the insights gained through this analysis to their own games. Prerequisites: GAME 201.

GAME 450. Game Development and Design Workshop. 3 Credits.

This workshop affords upper-division students the opportunity to tackle a wide variety of advanced projects on their own recognizance. It provides students working in game design and development with practical, individualized guidance in crucial aspects of the design and development process, including ideation, research, prototyping, implementation, documentation, and playtesting. Likewise, it provides students working in game criticism with instruction in the scholarly process of identifying, researching, drafting, and revising critical arguments about games and game-related issues. Prerequisites: GAME 201.

GAME 466. World Building. 3 Credits.

An examination of world building as ludic, narrative, and spatial praxis. This course will examine how games and game-related texts create playable realities through a critical examination of historical and contemporary examples of world building across a variety of media. It will provide students practical experience with how to translate these theoretical into effective gameplay across a variety of genres of games. Prerequisites: GAME 201.

GAME 494. Entrepreneurship in Game Studies, Development, and Design. 3 Credits.

Although traditionally associated with commercial ventures, entrepreneurship encompasses a wide variety of approaches that are also relevant to the creative and critical performances that intersect in the design, production, and study of games. This course will broach the theoretical and practical questions of how entrepreneurship intersects with and is implicated in the production of game and game-based endeavors. Conceived as a studio course, it is designed to teach students a hands-on methodology through which they can translate entrepreneurial approaches into real-world outcomes. Prerequisites: GAME 201.

IDS 300W. Interdisciplinary Theory and Concepts. 3 Credits.

An examination of the history, concepts and application of interdisciplinary study. This course includes an analysis of similarities and differences in academic disciplines and the application of interdisciplinary approaches to a specific topic of study. This is a writing intensive course. Prerequisites: a grade of C or better in ENGL 211C, ENGL 221C or ENGL 231C.

IDS 307T. Digital Writing. 3 Credits.

This course introduces students to issues of writing in various digital environments like web pages, email, blogs, wikis, and discussion boards. It also introduces fundamentals of hypertext authoring, digital and visual rhetoric, and image manipulation. Prerequisites: ENGL 110C and ENGL 211C or ENGL 221C or ENGL 231C.

IDS 368. Internship in Interdisciplinary Studies. 1-6 Credits.

An opportunity to integrate service and applied learning experience with interdisciplinary perspectives. Prerequisite: junior standing and permission of individualized interdisciplinary studies program coordinator.

IDS 369. Internship in Conservation Leadership. 3-6 Credits.

As part of the Conservation Leadership minor, this graded internship will provide an opportunity to integrate service and applied learning experience with interdisciplinary perspectives. 200 hours are required for the 3-credit option, and 400 hours are required for the 6-credit option. Prerequisites: BIOL 466W/OEAS 466W/IDS 466W and BIOL 467/OEAS 467/IDS 467.

IDS 397. Independent Study. 1-6 Credits.

IDS 398. Independent Study. 1-6 Credits.

IDS 400/500. Study Abroad. 0 Credits.

IDS 466W. Introduction to Mitigation and Adaptation Studies. 3 Credits.

Students will be introduced to the science underpinning mitigation of human-induced changes in the Earth system, including but not limited to climate change and sea level rise, and adaptation to the impacts of these changes. The course will cover the environmental hazards and the opportunities and limitations for conservation, mitigation and adaptation. This is a writing intensive course. Cross listed with BIOL 466W and OEAS 466W. Prerequisites: BIOL 291 or permission of instructor.

IDS 467. Sustainability Leadership. 3 Credits.

In this class, students will discover what makes a leader for sustainability. They will consider a range of global and local crises from a leadership point of view in the context of sustainability science, which addresses the development of communities in a rapidly changing social, economic, and environmental system-of-systems environment. The course will be based on taking a problem-motivated and solution-focused approach to the challenges considered. The course includes a service learning project focusing on a leadership experience in solving a real-world environmental problem. Prerequisite: BIOL 466W or OEAS 466W or IDS 466W.

IDS 493. IDS Electronic Portfolio Project. 3 Credits.

The preparation of an electronic portfolio integrating the student's academic study, work experiences, skill identification and work products. Alternative formats are used for varying uses of the portfolio. Prerequisites: IDS 300W or permission of the instructor and senior standing.

IDS 494. Entrepreneurship in Interdisciplinary Studies. 3 Credits.

This course is designed to help students enhance their personal and professional development through innovation guided by faculty members and professionals. It offers students an opportunity to integrate disciplinary theory and knowledge through developing a nonprofit program, product, business, or other initiative. The real-world experiences that entrepreneurships provide will help students understand how academic knowledge leads to transformations, innovations, and solutions to different types of problems. Prerequisite: IDS 300W and approval of the program coordinator.

IDS 495. Topics in Integrative Studies. 3 Credits.

Focused study of selected topics linking perspectives, research and applications from a variety of disciplines. Emphasis is on disciplinary synthesis. Prerequisite: IDS 300W.

IDS 497. IDS Individualized Senior Project. 3 Credits.

This course is a vehicle for the execution of the senior project requirement of the Interdisciplinary Studies Program. The project will be negotiated between the student, faculty sponsors, and the program. Open only to individualized integrative studies majors. Prerequisites: IDS 300W, permission of the instructor and an approved individualized integrative studies curriculum plan.